Sox, Orioles set poor example by fighting

I just finished reading about the Red Sox-Orioles game in which Boston pitcher Derek Lowe intentionally hit an Orioles batter after Boston slugger Manny Ramirez was hit by a pitch earlier in the game.

To have grown men, supposedly professionals, intentionally pitch at a batter is something I just can’t understand, especially because it usually does nothing but incite further problems with bench-clearing brawls or more bean pitches.

Think about it, many of these men are also fathers and husbands, responsible for taking care of their families. Why would a player want to intentionally hurt a person on the opposing team? Would they want their Little League son or daughter to take aim at an opposing batter’s head?

There seems to be a fair amount of bean pitches being thrown this year, and the teams make no bones about the fact that they are intentionally done to send a message or retaliate for a previous act.

I can’t think of anything more warped than this out-of- control machismo. It’s bad for baseball and bad for baseball fans, many of them children. To have the Red Sox manager Grady Little say, “We don’t initiate anything. We do a good job of retaliating before it gets too far out of balance” shows that even management condones this ridiculous behavior.

Even the way the BDN reported on the game demonstrates the tendency to glorify the behavior. The headline, subhead and article all dwell on the bean pitch and ensuing fight, and the photo also shows a close up of the brawl.

I have been a competitive athlete for most of my life and I always found the best way to “retaliate” for something done by another team is to not respond in kind but to win the game. For these professional ball players to act this way demonstrates a very distorted reality of what’s real and important, and it sends the wrong message to the thousands of youth who are loyal fans of these athletes.

Alan Comeau

Acadia Hospital Community Relations Director

Bangor